Why Technology Will Never Fix EducationThe Chronicle of Higher Education

While technology helps education where it’s already doing well, technology does little for mediocre educational systems. Even when technology tested well in experiments, the attempt to scale up its impact was limited by the availability of strong leadership, good teachers, and involved parents.

The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn’t the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure.

It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.

An education blog whose authors believe there’s too much hype around “personalized learning” technology has posted a series of video case studies about the trend. The result is an unusual look at five colleges trying high-tech classroom experiments and wrestling with how new teaching methods change the role of students and teachers.

The case studies, divided into short segments covering different topics, together resemble a MOOC. Michael Feldstein, founder of the blog and a host of the videos, hopes that some teaching-with-technology centers will use the videos in their professional-development workshops.

At a time when higher education is actively experimenting with competency-based education (CBE), confusion abounds about what CBE is and the extent of its contribution to the present transformation of higher education.

Eduventures has spoken with over 300 higher education industry leaders about this practice. Part of our goal was to better understand myths and misconceptions about CBE, of which there are many. Here are five of the most common myths and misconceptions we heard.

The new report, titled, "Measuring Mastery," provides best practices for schools in how to validate assessments and establish performance levels that tie to "real-world mastery." CBE programs need to be validated against external standards in order to prove to employers that a competency-based education is "credible evidence of students' career readiness."

"CBE programs have generally done a good job defining the relevant competencies, that is, what students need to know, and what they'll learn," said Katie McClarty, director of the Center for College & Career Success. "The next critical step will be gathering empirical evidence that documents the relationship between competency mastery and future success."

The average doctoral student spends about six months of their four-year programme writing their thesis, and another three “waiting for it to be examined”. Is this really appropriate for the modern world? Communication within the science world and with the public is becoming shorter and snappier, yet our PhDs still seem to be stuck in the 1960s.

What about going further and abolishing the thesis entirely, and instead allowing students to submit a bundle of papers? The “integrated format”, as the UK Council for Graduate Education calls it, is already common in many European countries. The UKCGE report attributes the integrated format’s rise to growing pressure on students to publish their findings prior to graduation – not least so that they can compete for postdoctoral positions in an increasingly international job market.

David A. Wood, Jr., a professor and former dean of performance excellence at San Antonio College uses Excel data to inform his instruction and achieve better learning outcomes for his students.

Here's Wood's magic formula: He tracks how each student does with each test question and performs an item analysis after each exam, which tells him "right away" where his students have understanding and where they're struggling. Having those results tells the faculty member where he needs to put the emphasis in the next section of the course.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) has launched the Center for Student Work, an online collection of exemplary student projects. A collaborative project between HGSE and Expeditionary Learning, the free resource includes videos, writing samples and other work designed to provide teachers foundations to create their own projects.

The searchable collection includes projects in English language arts, health and wellness, math, performing arts, science and technology, social studies, visual arts and world languages.

Trying Team-Based Inquiry to Teach Research Skills in the HumanitiesInside Higher Ed

Teaching research as a team-based activity is probably old hat to those in STEM, but in the humanities, many of us still cling to the solitary research process of toiling away in some dark library corner.

This semester I took a different approach: instead of setting students up for the conventional research paper, I structured my class around a collaborative research process. I hope these takeaways can help you think of ways collaborative projects can make your classes more engaging and fun to teach.

Educational Innovation Weekly Review is curated by Tecnológico de Monterrey'sObservatory of Educational Innovation. With the highlights of the week on innovation, technology and education. If you require more information about a specific note, please email us: observatorio@itesm.mx. TECNOLÓGICO DE MONTERREY, 2015.